Smart devices, the cornerstone of the home of the future, can't seem to capture the imagination or open the wallets of a large number of Americans. Some 46.7 million broadband households aren't ready to buy a smart home device, according to a survey released this week by Parks Associates, a market research and consulting company specializing in consumer technology products. [More...]

Maintaining and increasing research and development spending in the COVID-19 era is critical for high technology vendors to deliver new solutions and services, continue to innovate, and position their businesses to rebound from the negative effects of the global pandemic. Analysts, financial advisors, and investors concur that, wherever possible, vendors should continue to aggressively invest in R&D. [More...]

The PC market ended 2020 with a big bang, as shipments during the final quarter rose 25 percent over the same period in 2019, according to a report by research firm Canalys. Much of the market growth during the year was driven by notebooks and mobile workstation shipments, which increased 44 percent over 2019, reaching 235.1 million. [More...]

This year, due to COVID restrictions, CES is all digital. Let's talk about what you'll see at the show, and what might make an event like CES work better virtually. I used to teach a class on how to put together tech events, and I'm pulling out my old notes for this. We'll close with the product of the week, a monitor launched by Dell that is focused on video conferencing in the new normal. [More...]

An international group of scientists is demanding scientific journals demand more transparency from researchers in computer-related areas when accepting their reports for publication. They also want computational researchers to include information about their code, models and computational environments in published reports. [More...]

More than 80 percent of 650 cybersecurity and IT professionals surveyed by Check Point Software Technologies in July said their traditional security solutions either do not work at all, or only provide limited functions in the cloud. This indicates that organizations' cloud migrations and deployments are racing ahead of their security teams' abilities to defend against attacks and breaches. [More...]

For the majority of consumers, cutting the cable TV cord is a mixed bag for a variety of reasons. The big misconception is that you will drastically lower your cable bill. That is not the case unless you can also pickup free TV reception from an antenna. Otherwise, you will need to use a video streaming service to help lower your costs. [More...]

A new mobile processor announced by Qualcomm Technologies is expected to spawn a wave of economically priced 5G smartphones. Kedar Kondap, vice president for product management at Qualcomm maintained in a statement that the Snapdragon 480 5G Mobile Platform will exceed OEM and consumer expectations in delivering high- and mid-tier features at an affordable price. [More...]

While the pandemic has been painful, it has caused things to accelerate in several areas impressively rapidly. Two of those areas are robotics and artificial intelligence, which we'll see adapted broadly this decade with a considerable bump in 2021. Let's talk about all of that this week, and we'll close with the first product of the week in 2021, the Somnofy AI Sleep Monitor. [More...]

Final rules governing unmanned aircraft, commonly known as drones, have been released by the Federal Aviation Administration. The move is expected to open the door for delivery of consumer packages by air. The rules establish minimum standards for safety so drones can fly over populated areas and at night under certain conditions. [More...]

Eight of the top 10 states for mobile Internet coverage are in the Northeast, according to an analysis released by consumer product and services comparison website WhistleOut. However, the best mobile Internet coverage isn't in a state at all -- but in the District of Columbia. To rank the states, 75 percent of the score was based on median mobile download speeds and 25 percent by 5G coverage. [More...]

Our infrastructure wasn't set up to suddenly shift massive amounts of traffic from companies to homes. Exacerbating this are cable networks with shared capacity because they were built with the idea that most folks wouldn't be using them at the same time. 5G might be the only realistic way to deal with these issues on a sustained basis. [More...]

Since 2014, when Apple first set out to design its own vehicle, the company has engaged in automotive research and development collectively under the name "Project Titan." A report that Apple now is readying its own self-driving car for release in 2024 is being met with a healthy dose of skepticism by some analysts. [More...]

TechNewsWorld columnist Rob Enderle looks back at all of the Products of the Week he selected during the year and picks the one that made the most significant impression to crown the Product of the Year. Let's look at the contenders that made the initial cut, and then he'll rank the top four products leading up to the 2020 Product of the Year. [More...]